Who Was Afeni Shakur? Remembering Tupac's Mother

Though she is primarily known as the subject of Tupac's 1995 song "Dear Mama" -- one of the best songs about mothers of all time -- she was a social activist for many years and, later in life, the manager of Tupac's estate. "Many mothers have their children," she said in a 2011 interview. "Not many mothers have their children physically and been able to have their children still before them in so many ways."

Click through the gallery to learn more about the life of Afeni Shakur.

Who Was Afeni Shakur? Remembering Tupac's Mother

Shakur was born Alice Faye Williams in Lumberton, North Carolina in 1947. She joined the Black Panthers in the late '60s, when she was given the name "Afeni," which means "dear one" in Swahili.

In 1969, SHakur and other Black Panthers were arrested and charged with conspiracy to bomb department stores and police stations around New York City. In 1970 she had an affair with a man named Billy Garland, whom she had met at a BPP strategy's officer meeting the year before. She was pregnant during her trial, the duration of which she spent in jail and served as her own defense attorney. She was acquitted in May 1971. One month later, on June 16, 1971, her son Tupac Amaru Shakur was born.

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Estrangement and reconciliation; Tupac dies

Shakur's passion for activism sometimes made her an absentee mother. Then, in the '80s she became addicted to crack cocaine. She kicked Tupac out of the house when he was 17. They wouldn't talk for years. In the early '90s, she enrolled in a drug rehabilitation program and reconciled with her son, who had become a budding rap star.

After Tupac was murdered in 1996, she founded the Tupac Amaru Foundation for the Arts, a charity promoting youth involvement and development in the arts, as well as Amaru Entertainment, an organization that released Tupac's posthumous albums (and sparred with several distributors, including Suge Knight's Death Row Records, over the rights to sell his unreleased music). In 1999, she appeared at the MTV Music Awards alongside Voletta Wallace, Notorious B.I.G.'s mother, to promote unity in hip hop.

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Divorce proceedings

Shakur filed from divorce from Gust Davis, her husband of 12 years, in March 2016. They had been separated for a year; Shakur had moved from their 50-acre ranch in North Carolina to a houseboat in Sausalito, California, in 2015.

According to TMZ, the couple had not signed a prenuptial agreement. Davis, a minister, requested the following in alimony: their ranch, houseboat, Jaguar, and half of Shakur's $20,000 monthly stipend (earnings from the Tupac estate). Shakur passed away on the evening of May 2, 2016, six weeks after she filed divorce papers. She had been the executor of Tupac's estate for nearly over 19 years. It is unclear what will happen next.

RIP Afeni Shakur (1947-2016).

Though she is primarily known as the subject of Tupac's 1995 song "Dear Mama" -- one of the best songs about mothers of all time -- she was a social activist for many years and, later in life, the manager of Tupac's estate. "Many mothers have their children," she said in a 2011 interview. "Not many mothers have their children physically and been able to have their children still before them in so many ways."

Click through the gallery to learn more about the life of Afeni Shakur.